In fact such pastimes now seemed inadequate to a man who had been actively taking a part in the biggest game of them all, war!
When once the idea had come to him it never left him. Each new disappointment, the unfulfilled expectation of interest, drove it further and further home. There was everywhere a lack of his old companions; always a crowd of new faces. The girls he had known and liked because they were likable, had got married within the few years of his absence. The matrons had made fresh companionships which held possession. Bridge had arisen as a new society fetish which drew to itself the interests and time of all. A new order of "South African Millionaires" had arisen who by their wealth and extravagance had set at defiance the old order of social caste, and largely changed the whole scheme of existing values.
When he fled away from London he found something of the same changes elsewhere. In the stir of war, and even in the long weariness of waiting which followed it, the whirling along of the great world was, if not forgotten, unthought of. The daily work and the daily interest were so personal and so absorbing that abstract thinking was not.
In the country, of course, the changes were less, but they were more marked. The few years had their full tally of loss; of death, and decay. The eyes that saw them were so far fresh eyes, that unchecked memory had not a perpetual ease of comparison.
For a while he tried hard to find a fresh interest in his work. But here again was change with which he could feel neither sympathy nor toleration. Great schemes of reform were on foot; schemes of organization, of recruiting, of training. The ranks in the Service, of which he had experience, were becoming more mechanical than ever. Had he by this time acquired higher rank in the army it is possible that he would have entered with ardour into the
